Excel Tip # 34: Index/Match Instead of Vlookup

I’ve known about combining =index() and =match() for a few years now. It even shows up in a textbook I use:

But honestly, I’ve always been perplexed about why to use this.

One thing I’ve learned is that it is useful for “sorting” data that you can’t actually sort. I know it sounds weird, but students have told me that their employers do have worksheets of data that they don’t want sorted into different orders. And the workaround for that is these two functions.

Now Access Analytic’s The Barrow gives me three more reasons:

Here are 3 reasons why you should use INDEX/MATCH instead of VLOOKUP:

a) You can “lookup to the left”

b) You don’t get incorrect results when a column is inserted or deleted from your data

c) When used in conjunction with Tables, the formulae are a lot more meaningful.

Genesis

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